Field of the Invention
One or more embodiments of the invention are related to the field of multiplex communication protocols for medical devices such as, but not limited to, infusion pumps. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, embodiments of the invention enable a medical device communication method for communication between connected peripherals and subsystems that includes connection-oriented, connectionless-oriented, broadcast and multicast data exchange with priority handling of data, fragmentation and reassembly of data, unique static and dynamic address assignment and hot swap capabilities.
Description of the Related Art
Devices that exchange data generally do so using a communication protocol. Communication protocols enable data to be transmitted and received in a controlled manner. Medical devices are example devices that may utilize a communication protocol, for example to exchange data between peripherals or subsystems that generate or utilize data. There are many types of communications protocols that vary in complexity, efficiency and hardware utilization. Current communication protocols utilized within medical devices make use of the operating system and particular bus architecture within the medical device. A problem with this type of architecture is that some implementations may prevent time-multiplexed access of the communication link, thereby starving or otherwise preventing multiple applications from communicating simultaneously. In addition, applications that transfer data using operating system and bus specific software calls must be altered when the operating system or bus architecture changes, specifically to account for differences in operating system calls or with respect to the bus architecture, different data formatting, sequencing and any other protocol specific nuances. In addition, medical devices in general must undergo extensive testing to ensure that they do not fail. Thus, changing bus architectures increases costs associated with applications that make use of the bus architecture, since the application must be retested if the source code for the application is altered.
Known communications protocols are generally targeted at a specific type of communication bus architecture, for example Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, CAN, Serial, I2C, SPI, etc. Known communication protocols in general are not capable of use with more than one type of communication bus since they attempt to provide a solution to a specific communication problem in a coherent manner. Because of the low power requirements, limited processor capabilities and limited memory capacity of medical devices with embedded processors that do specific functions or tasks, such as infusion pumps, existing sophisticated communications protocols are generally not utilized in such medical devices.
In summary, known solutions use communication protocols that are tied to a specific operating system and/or communications bus. Unfortunately, these communication protocols are not agnostic to all communication bus types and do not provide an efficient and lightweight protocol stack for intra-device communication that includes connection-oriented, connectionless-oriented, broadcast and multicast data exchange with priority handling of data, fragmentation, and reassembly of data, unique static and dynamic address assignment for connected subsystems and hot swap capabilities. For at least the limitations described above there is a need for a medical device communication method that provides these features as described and claimed herein.